Embassy Row

By James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published December 19, 2003

Free Trade Benefits

Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos concluded a successful visit to Washington this week with a free-trade agreement and a promise to ease his nation's crippling debt incurred under the Marxist Sandinista regime.

The Central America Free Trade Agreement will benefit the United States by improving the economies of the four other nations included in the pact and reducing legal and illegal immigration, he said. In addition to Nicaragua, the agreement will eliminate U.S. tariffs on a range of exports from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

"The United States will benefit from the improvement of the socioeconomic situation of Central America, stopping migration and opening investment opportunities," Mr. Bolanos told the International Republican Institute.

He also announced the successful conclusion of a deal with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to cut up to 80 percent of Nicaragua's debt of about $6.5 billion.

Mr. Bolanos has promoted economic and political reforms that have satisfied the financial institutions, but he said more must be done.

"In order to make the best of the opportunities that just opened for Nicaragua, we need to keep pushing for broader institutional reforms aimed to liberate the judiciary and electoral systems from harmful political influences," he said.

Nicaraguan Ambassador Salvador Stadthagen complained in a recent interview that too many judges are still under the influence of the Sandinistas, who ruled the nation from 1979 to 1990.

Mr. Bolanos said the debt incurred under the Sandinistas was equal to 42 years of Nicaraguan exports. The debt relief will cut the country's financial burden to the equivalent of three years of exports, he said.

Nicaragua, one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, can defeat poverty only with a strong economy that creates jobs, he said.

"In the long run, the problem of poverty can only be resolved through economic development and not by social programs that sometimes do not achieve their objectives and are filled with expensive bureaucratic administrators and sizeable overhead," he said.